Tag Archives: Food

I’ve been trying to write this post for a week. I keep thinking, “I need more information, first.” Well, I’m never going to have all of the information. Here’s my starting point:

[[WARNING: This post is going to be LONG. And personal. Proceed with caution.]]

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a little bit crazy. We’re all a little crazy. I know that. But I’ve always been kind of crazy. A lot of people have called it a lot of names over the years. In high school, I had boys tell me I was “psycho.” Friends try to make me feel better by telling me “it’s all that creativity!!” Doctors have called it anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and ADHD. “Intense” is a real common descriptor for my personality. Whatever you call it, it all feels the same to me: it’s like electricity in my veins. It’s an energy I don’t know how to control. It’s over-flowing emotions and irrational ideas.

I have spent the majority of my life attempting to manage… this. Whatever the hell “this” is. But now… now my boy is a little crazy, too. My mom tells me that he is “exactly like you were at this age.” I love that she can see me in him, but then I immediately fast forward twenty-something years and think, “HOLY FRIJOLES! I don’t want THIS for HIM!!”

And then, out of nowhere, there seemed to be some light in the tunnel.

I don’t dare jinx it and say “light at THE END of the tunnel,” because, quite frankly, I have no idea how long this tunnel is. For me, this tunnel has been about twenty-years-long. But as I was saying:

My email dink-dinked my phone at lunch last Thursday. It was my mom. The subject of the email was the title of an article she wanted me to read: The Gluten Made Her Do It: How Going Gluten Free Saved my Daughter’s Mental Health. WTF? Really? “I’ll read this later,” I thought. But then I got anxious about it. Kind of butterflies-in-my-tummy about it. I HAVE TO READ THAT ARTICLE!! So I came straight home after lunch and rushed my Little Bubbie off to nap-land and opened up my laptop. And I was fascinated. Completely intrigued. Was this the answer all along?

For those that don’t want to read the article referenced above, that’s okie-dokie. It’s long. I get it. Let me summarize it for you: This lady’s little girl was… intense. She had huge tantrums (not just two-year-old-tantrums), she didn’t want to be hugged or snuggled, she got completely out of control for no reason. She was just like my little babe, and exactly like I was at their age. So what did she do for her sweet-little-girl-turned-monster? She removed gluten from her diet.

I immediately started thinking about all that I knew about gluten-intolerance. My grandmother had a false diagnosis for Celiac disease for 8 years. I was all too familiar with a gluten-free lifestyle. But what would make that mom remove gluten from her physically-healthy-but-a-little-crazy baby’s diet? I set off to ask Google. And Facebook. And Pinterest. I asked friends and family and total strangers and search engines: WHY? What’s the link?

Wanna know what I found? I found that it makes total sense. I found that parents of Autism-spectrum children often put their kiddos on a Gluten Free Casein Free (GFCF) diet. I found that there’s something called Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) and these folks also benefit from a gluten-free diet (among other things). I found that a physical reaction to gluten isn’t the only way that our bodies can be intolerant. I found that it sure as hell couldn’t hurt to give it a shot.

So, all that being said, I have spent the last week reading EVERYTHING I can get my hands on that relates to going G-Free. I’m currently reading Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s The G-Free Diet: A Gluten Free Survival Guide (only $2.99 for the Kindle version!!) and it has been really informative. She addressed gluten intolerance from an almost strictly Celiac perspective, but the information she offers about the diagnosis of such conditions in America is enlightening. These problems are so much more widely diagnosed in other countries, but just as prevalent here as they are in the rest of the world. Why aren’t they being diagnosed in America? Because there’s no money to be made on a gluten intolerance issue. All you do is change your diet. No pills, no supplements, no therapy. The pharmaceutical industry doesn’t make a dime. So doctors don’t diagnose it. It’s more profitable to diagnose something else that DOES require a pill. Even if it’s the wrong diagnosis.

I have been in the process over this past week, also, of overhauling my house, namely my kitchen, to prepare for a g-free transition. I’ve been continuing to feed my family glutens and observing behaviors even more carefully. Sunday is the transition day, though. We will make the full switch this Sunday and I will continue to update you all on our progress.

The purpose of this [incredibly long] post is dual-sided. One: I want to inform those around us of what’s going on in the simplest manner. I’ve talked to a lot of friends and family about our plans and what this means for us, but I know that there are other people in my life that would benefit from this information or simply might find it interesting. The second purpose is this: if you have found yourself in my shoes, would you mind offering up any advice you think might be useful to me in this transition. As the mom, I’m responsible for all the things my family eats… and I’m also responsible for making them taste delicious. My boy is terribly picky, so I’m nervous. But I know a lot of people have gone before me on this, so I’m hoping for some good insight. I’ll keep up my search and let you know if I find anything super interesting, too, m’kay?

NOW, ALL OF THIS BEING SAID, I MUST OFFER THIS DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor. The information presented in this post is merely a discussion of the things I have found to be true for other people, like me, looking for an answer to an invisible illness. Take what you’d like from it, but you should obviously talk to your doctor before making a dietary change this drastic.

Today was the first full day of our family transformation. Whew! The Little One has had more junk food over the past few weeks than I care to admit, so today was our first true day of “detox”. It doesn’t help that we have a bug hanging around and his appetite is pretty lousy from that. All he wanted all day was candy canes. Around noon I finally just threw them all away. For some things moderation is the answer. For candy, not so much. We gotta get this junk outta here!!

My little guy really doesn’t care for veggies. He’ll eat most “average” fruits, but zero veggies. I started giving him some V8 juice (the yummy ones, not the tomato ones!) and I feel pretty sneaky about that. He loves it! Hubby and I like veggies okay, but we never make a very strong effort to eat them. Until now. Something has to change.

In an effort to make our transition into healthier eating a little easier, I figured we could make some “better for us” homemade pizzas. I can’t really sit them down in front of a bowl of broccoli and carrots and expect them to devour it. We have to ease into this, after all!! For Christmas I received a set of mini pizza pans, and they might be the greatest thing in my kitchen now. I am IN LOVE. I used one package of pizza crust mix and divided it between the four pans. Each of us was able to create our own pizza (and I have lunch for tomorrow!!) and we didn’t have to compromise on what each of us wanted. Hubby had BBQ sauce, onions, and baby bella mushrooms with a touch of mozzarella, and my munchkin made his very own pizza for the first time. He smashed down the dough, spread out the sauce, and added all of his own cheese. (WHERE WAS MY CAMERA!?!?) He was so proud when it came out.

The pizza I really want to tell you about, though, is my pizza. I’m feeling just slightly genius for my actions a couple weeks ago when I had some broccoli that I wasn’t getting around to eating. It had been in the fridge for about 3 days and it wasn’t on my menu for the rest of the week and I knew I was heading out of town for Christmas anyway, so I washed it really good, cut it up, and dried it real well. Then I put it in an airtight plastic container and stuck it in the freezer. Viola! I was able to have broccoli on my pizza tonight and I didn’t have to prep an entire bunch of broccoli or make my family suffer through me cooking it (because they hate it). I also had a bag of artichoke hearts from Trader Joes that no one else likes, so I got all of those to myself, too! I piled all my veggies on my crust and topped it with about 1.5 ounces of mozzarella and stuck it in the over for about 10 minutes and dinner was done! And you know what? Those tiny pans are the PERFECT amount of pizza. I wasn’t able to stuff myself silly because that was all the pizza there was, and now, 30 minutes after dinner, I am perfectly content.

Broccoli, artichoke heart, & portabella pizza

I’m not sure that this post will be at all helpful to anyone else, but I wanted to share how much I LOVE these pans and how easy it made pizza night. My entire dinner was under about 300 calories and it was PIZZA! I’m feeling accomplished for the day. :)

For those of you who know me, you know I am a junk food addict. I love food. It’s a love-hate relationship, though. I love to eat ice cream/chips/chocolate/anything I can find, and I hate when it ends up on my thighs. I’m sure most of my audience can relate, but I really give myself hell for it. I am an emotional eater, and I eat when I’m happy, I eat when I’m sad, I eat when I’m worried… you get the picture.

Anywho… I’m going to be real honest with you here. Many women refuse to talk about their weight. I’m not one of those. First of all, I don’t let that number define me, so I don’t mind if you know it. Second of all, I don’t think I look like I weigh what the scale tells me I weigh. But maybe I’m in denial. Either way, I’ve found that talking about it actually makes it easier to tackle it.

So… that being said… When I decided things had gotten out of control for me it was late fall 2009. It was JUST BEFORE I found out I was pregnant. The scale hit 210 and I flipped out. And then, like I said, I found out I was going to be growing a person for the next 7 months (I was already 11 weeks pregnant when I found out). There was nothing I could do about my weight, because–quite frankly–it didn’t matter anymore. I returned to my pre-pregnancy weight within 10 days of giving birth, and I tried on my own to lose the weight, but to no avail. In February 2011 I joined Weight Watchers and I had great success with the Points Plus program. I finished my first 5K in May 2011 and by June I had dropped to 175, having lost 35 pounds. I felt amazing! I got a little cocky about how easy it was for me, though, and stopped trying so hard. And then we started cutting back expenses so I cancelled my subscription, knowing I could do it on my own. Boy was I wrong. A couple months ago I started thinking about the scale again. When I got the courage to step back on it, I was at 190. That hurt so bad. I’d put more than half of what I lost back on. I was devastated. So what did I do? I ate more.

I’ve talked briefly about my convictions against factory farming and some of the other awful things that the FDA allows in our food, but I really haven’t talked about it much. I’ll save all of that for another day. But, the short of it is this: there is something I am eating on a regular basis that doesn’t agree with me. I am dying to figure out what it is, and I’ve had some ideas, but as I was reading about diet plans I could get on board with (because I don’t want to pay for WW anymore, even though it is an amazing program) I came across Dr. Oz’s 48 Hour Cleanse. I’ve never done a cleanse/detox before, but this one looked do-able, so I thought I’d give it a try. As it turns out, it really wasn’t bad, and I will actually do this again. I loved how simply everything was laid out, and I never felt hungry or deprived. It was a really great way to drop the water weight I’ve been holding onto, also. At the end of the two days I had lost 5 pounds. (Keep in mind, this is water weight/bloat that I lost… not actually 5 pounds of fat… but what a motivator!!) So, I’m going to break down what I did and fill you in on some tricks I found.

**NOTE: I am not a professional, I am merely speaking from my experience.**

Step one was preparing my juice. [[I will tell you that the hardest part of this cleanse was the amount of prep work it took. It wasn’t impossible, but I could see it being hard for someone who works outside of the home, and I suppose that’s why Dr. Oz refers to it as a weekend cleanse.]]

On the first day I drank the pineapple/pomegranate juice. This one was very easy to prepare, just measuring already prepared juices into a pitcher with some water and a squeeze of lemon.

The green juice, however, was not so easy. Now, if I had a juicer that would have made this SO MUCH EASIER. However, I don’t have a juicer. But I do have a food processor and some cheesecloth. It’s possible, but it’s not a fun chore. I piled all my chopped veggies into the processor and processed for about 4 minutes, until it was liquid. This was one of the recipes that called for ginger, and I will tell you, I do not like ginger. However, it really wasn’t bad in the juice. From what I read, ginger is very important for detoxifying the body, so I didn’t want to skip it and figured I could gag it down. The juice itself tasted mostly like cucumber with a hint of mint. I subbed Romaine for the kale, but followed the recipe otherwise. I’m not familiar with kale, so I went with another green I was familiar with. Next time (if I have a juicer!!) I will try kale.

Straining spoonfuls at a time onto cheesecloth over a glass took me about 30 minutes. Ugh…

But I ended up with this beautiful green liquid just the same, so I suppose it worked out just fine. I feel pretty neutral about this juice. I by no means loved it, but it really wasn’t terrible. If you hate cucumbers, though, you might hate it. Don’t let that scare you. Find a veggie you do like and sub it in for the cukes.

Breakfast both days was quinoa with ginger, prunes, and almond milk. The recipe calls for rice milk, but I had almond and didn’t want to have to buy rice also. I made a few substitutions based solely on not wanting to buy something I wasn’t going to use again for sake of money. This recipe also called for flax seed oil, and I subbed coconut oil. I have to say, this was my least favorite part of the cleanse. I hated breakfast. BUT… I have a terrible gag reflex and I normally can’t get something I dislike down without gagging, but I managed to eat most of my breakfast both days, so it must not be THAT terrible. Maybe it was just too early to eat quinoa. I also don’t normally eat breakfast. so that may play a part as well.

Mmmm…. NOT!!! :)

I loved lunch. Both days it was a smoothie made from frozen berries (I subbed mixed berries for straight blueberries), banana, almond milk, chia seeds, and ice. This was just plain yummy. Really.

Dinner both days was vegetable soup. Here I subbed yellow onions for the red onions (because I HATE red onions) and portabella mushrooms for shiitake because they were twice the price and I was already spending too much. I really liked this soup. The plan refers to it as vegetable broth, which to me implies that you would only drink the liquid, but I ate the veggies, too. I figured it couldn’t hurt. I skipped the fermented sauerkraut that was supposed to accompany it because it sounded terrible and I didn’t even know where to find it.

Mmmmm….

In addition to the items shown above, I also had plain, cut veggies like celery and cucumbers. All in all, I feel really good about the detox and, like I said, I’ll do it again. Today I weighed in at 188 (I was 193 the morning I started the detox) and I’m feeling motivated to start making some positive changes in my life. I’ve had a lot going on lately in the “life change” department, and the storm is beginning to calm. That makes me happier than I can explain.

I’m sorry to have gone missing for a while. I’m getting back on track! :)

I love Dr. Oz. LOVE him. He motivates me and informs me… and inspires me. Some people don’t share my feelings for him, but that’s okay… more for me! :)

Today I was watching his show about addictive foods and the dangers of a food addiction. Everyone knows about nicotine addiction or alcohol addiction (and the negative connotation surrounding them) but the people in Dr. Oz’s audience today were actually arguing over whether or not food addiction is possible. Of course it is (in my opinion). I believe we can be addicted to just about anything. TV. Video games. Activities. I think at one point in time I was actually addicted to crying. I know, without a doubt, that I am struggling with an addictive relationship with food.

I’ve stumbled upon a couple of blogs lately talking about food and wellness, and most recently it was Lisa Byrne’s weekly newsletter (delivered this morning) that really spoke to me. Dr. Oz’s 4 Most Addictive Foods (linked in the photo above) are listed as: sugar, chocolate, meat, and cheese. Lisa’s list of dangerous acid-forming foods are listed as: caffeine & soft drinks, sugar, white flour, and meat and meat products. Is it a coincidence that the lists are nearly identical? Probably not.

Over the last few months I have been struggling with a terrible tummy ache after just about every meal. The worst time of day is following dinner. I haven’t been able to figure out just what the problem is, but I’ve decided that it’s time to get to the bottom of it. I went vegetarian for a while (August-October) and I’ve never felt the same since then. I felt fine going into the transition (I went vegetarian for ethical reasons rather than dietary) but since then my body seems to have a hard time digesting anything–not just meat.

As a result I have decided to start eating differently. I plan to cut my sugar and soda consumption WAY back. I plan to only eat meat that was ethically raised (Lisa’s disclaimer on adding meat to her list) and add in a whole lot more fruits and veggies. I’m afraid that my tummy could be mad at wheat & wheat products… but I’ll cross that bridge after this one. I’m hoping these changes will fix me right up and it’s not gluten at all.

Either way… I’m looking for help from you guys. What do you eat to be healthy? Where do you get your sweet-but-not-sugar-loaded fixes? I have a giant sweet tooth and that’s what scares me most about this. And how do you dress up your veggies? I’m excited and nervous for this venture all at the same time. I just have to do something…